Musk usking
Musk is throwing his weight around more by the hour. It’s more than slightly alarming.
Musk has feverishly spent the past few days boosting disinformation and divisive rhetoric on X about Muslim grooming gangs in the UK, posting almost 200 times, a WIRED review of the centibillionaire’s output has found.
These “grooming gangs” reference an organized child sexual abuse scandal that came to light in 2014 involving gangs of British Pakastani men who abused an estimated thousands of girls in several towns in the north of England over the course of several decades.
It is in fact an important subject, but Musk doesn’t really give a shit about thousands of girls in working class cities, he gives a shit about sticking it to the brown people. It’s an important subject but he is the wrong person to big it up. He’s acting like a very unelected dictator of the world, and doing it more noisily by the hour.
During his three-day posting binge, Musk has called for UK government officials to be hanged and jailed, demanded the removal of Keir Starmer as UK prime minister, and suggested notorious far-right activist Tommy Robinson be released from prison.
See, that’s not ok. His fame and billions give him notoriety, and he’s parlaying that notoriety into trying to run the planet. The grooming gangs were and are an outrage, but he’s the wrong guy to be saying so.
Musk’s posts, which have racked up hundreds of millions of views on X, are just his latest effort at inserting himself into UK politics. In the wake of his successful efforts to aid president-elect Donald Trump in the US election, Musk has turned his attention to supporting the right-wing Reform Party in the UK. The party is headed by Trump ally Nigel Farage; Musk met him at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in December. Musk’s public endorsement of Reform has raised questions in the UK about the potential influence of foreign donors on UK elections.
What other countries are on his list? Russia? China? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Or is he just doing the easy ones.
Is it our Elon who is responsible for all this noise (music to the ears of the morally deaf), or is it Adrian Dittman masquerading as Musk?
I don’t doubt that Canada is on his list. We’re due for our next election on or before Oct. 25 of this year. I’m sure Musk will put his oar in. Not because we’re big or important, but because he can. No doubt Trump’s ” Canada is the 51st state” rhetoric will have piqued his interest, and there’s enough wokeness in Canadian political parties to rail against too. It will be interesting to see how Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre will react if Musk starts throwing his weight around. While Trudeau (assuming he’s still around) or whoever replaces him would be the most likely target of Musk’s poison posting, Poliievre,s acceptance or acquiescence to such interference might well backfire, as most Canadians would rankle at the prospect of American mmeddling in our affairs, and given Musk’s cozying up to Trump, any such poking in our politics I think would be seen by most as American meddling, as much as Muskian.
The ability to make money is indicative of nothing more than the ability to make money. It makes you a rich person, not a good, or moral, or wise person. It does not confer moral worth or legitimacy to any other endevour that person might pursue. As much as my inner eight-year-old like to watch rocket launches (and landings), I’m not really crazy about the idea of some rich guy having his own personal space program. It’s strange to think that while spies like James Bond are wildly improbable fictions (most spies and secret agents don’t shoot anyone or blow up anything; they just quietly recruit people to betray their countries, or do the betraying themselves), megalomaniacal Bond Villains could be very real. Musk could already be, or easily become one. Not that goverments or corporations are that much better or safer, but having that much power in the hands of an individual able to act on his own whims or delusions without having to answer to anyone?*
While the hyper rich might have earned the money they have, they have not earned the power and influence that money affords them; that’s just an unfortunate side effect of our current sociopolitical institutions, many of which have been inherited from our evolutionary past, some from the haphazard growth and evolution of our cultural development, much of which has been completely unplanned and accidental, and almost all of which has occurred in almost total ignorance of much of how our planet actually works. We are a jumped-up ape with an insatiable, global material culture, and nuclear weapons. Chimpanzee politics with ICBMs. What could possibly go wrong? That the likes of Donald Trump could come given access to degree of power that he has is as clear an indictment of our species’ short-sightedness and immaturity as any other example I could offer. Forget about the multiple crises we’re currently facing. Our systems of governance are still a potential nightmare because they can so easily amplify the worst that humans are capable of. Not just within nations, but between them as well. Take the United States. That any individual could have the potential to shape the fate of the entire planet is mind-boggling. That there is even this position of power available at all seems like a terrible idea. Is this any way to run a planet?
*I know that Musk, Trump, (Hitler, Stali, Mao…) etc. never act alone. Alone, they are nothing. They all need (and have) advisors, clerical staff, technicians, workers, supporters, followers, believers, underlings, lackeys, minions, etc. doing most of the actual work, but Milgram’s experimental results iare likely to apply to people following authority figures other than those wearing white lab coats. Those waving great wads of cash, or the Stars and Stripes, can likely rely on at least as much obedience and deference as was given to those with clipboards and pocket protectors. They’ll probably have an even larger percentage eager to comply with whatever is asked of them. (I remember during Trump’s first presidential run, seeing a picture of a woman wearing a T-shirt saying words to the effect that Trump could grab her pussy any time.) I don’t imagine Milgram had many subjects equally as eager to follow orders, but many Trump supporters seem to relish the prospect of hurting his enemies. Push a button to adminster lethal shocks to them? HELL, YEAH! He’ll have no end of volunteers. And as for Musk and his billions? He’s got his own fan base to draw upon, and if he doesn’t have quite enough of them to fill all the spots available, he’s got pleny of money to spend on those who can be bought. After all, there must have been job fairs to recruit workers to work in the secret lairs of all those Bond Villains. Push a button? For money? HELL, YEAH!
From an article on The Bulwark website (hardly a hot-bed of wokery) entiitled “Before Crackpot RFKism There Was Crackpot Lysenkoism: The danger of putting a charlatan and conspiracy theorist in charge of the powerful U.S. health department”!.:
“On his X platform, president-elect sidekick Elon Musk has been particularly insistent, tweeting the same message multiple times: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” The threats are serious enough that President Joe Biden is reportedly considering offering Fauci a preemptive pardon.”
And here is our fanboy in a recent comment:
“Ok, some of Elon’s Tweets are only partially informed or are exaggerated or not fully thought through, but still we’re far better off with them than without them.”
Our fanboy should start thinking through a few things himself, but he won’t.
Also, we have been informed in comments on this website that working-class people, with their low IQs, are genetically inferior and inherently feckless, or, in the words of one tweet that Adrian Dittmann (or was it Elon?) gave his approval to, ‘retarded’, and therefore not worth bothering about. From this point of view, working-class girls get what’s coming to them. But. oh, dear!, some, or most, of these girls were white, and some of the men that abused them were brown, so that throws a bit of a spanner in the works: which side of the equation should we choose to attack — the retarded white working-class girls or those abusive brown males? Well, as Ophelia correctly points out, we can see which side Elon/Adrian & his lackeys come down on, and why: it suits their cynical purposes.
Ah well, there are other planets. Maybe, if we all ask him nicely enough, he will give us a hand getting up to one or two of them, via Space-X of course. Here’s hoping his tickets are not too pricey.
Here’s a good plan to rescue our moral purity: if Elon talks in his massive megaphone about a social problem, we won’t try to solve it. That will show him.
@Ophelia:
And yet, last week’s posting binge was him defending the H-1B visa program, and the necessity of companies like his being able to bring in top engineering talent from places like India (aka brown people). This considerably annoyed plenty of MAGA types.
Also: To those contemplating the purchase of a (Tesla) Muskmobile, one word of advice: Don’t.
https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/tesla
Oh, our fanboy’s got a neat little rejoinder! It’s not neat, merely a desperate ploy.
twiliter on another thread was being far too kind. What we are seeing from Coel is what the former prime minister of Australia saw in Trump in his relationship to Putin:
“When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old boy who goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. My hero!”
I also remember Trump being really impressed by Kim Jong-un because he murdered his uncle and his brother.
It’s an infantile obsession, that is all.
Omar # 4
Maybe Musk can settle permanently on Mars, and take Trump and Nigel Farage with him.
Mostly Cloudy#10
Yes! And I’m sure Coel would love to go along with them. Such wonderful company! Just the four of them! To spend the rest of your life cooped up in a shelter of some kind, chatting with Farridge (this is the correct pronunciation – it rhymes with ‘disparage’, not with a home counties ‘garahge’), Trump, and, above all, Elon, or is it Adrian, or both? It’s a schoolboy’s wet dream!
Aljazeera has a useful post on Musk’s championing of ‘Tommy Robinson’:
Meanwhile extreme right-winger Nigel Farage is not too happy to find himself all over the news in a context that links him to Yaxley-Lennon:
“The grooming gangs were and are an outrage, but he’s the wrong guy to be saying so.”
No, he is the right guy to be saying so, because he is the guy who will be listened to. Others have tried over the years, women and men, right wing and left wing. They did not get very far. It should not need to be said by a very rich and potentially very powerful person for people to believe it and act upon it but obviously it does. Thank God for Elon Musk.
“Musk doesn’t really give a shit about thousands of girls in working class cities, he gives a shit about sticking it to the brown people.”
That is a serious accusation. Do you have any evidence for it?
Ohtobide#14
Well, from the accusations that have been levelled about Musk and his behaviour towards women in his own company, it appears that he doesn’t give a shit about women in general, except as vessels for his valuable sperm.
Incidentally, are you real, or an alter ego, like Adrian Dittman?
Tim Harris,
Accusations of sexual harassment are bad and only too believable. Rich, powerful men tend to behave like that. BUT what the rape gangs did was far worse. It is difficult and very distressing to read the accounts of what was done to those girls. I think everyone should read them though so that they know what we are dealing with. Musk should not be accused of not giving a shit about them because he treated some of his employees badly.
As for your question, do you really think that I am Elon Musk? That is quite amusing. I think if Musk wanted to talk to Ophelia on this website he would call himself Elon Musk. Why not? Anyway, I am not Musk. I am nothing like Musk. If Musk is secretly commenting here he must be using a different name. Tim Harris maybe?
If Ohtobide were Elon Musk, he would already have offered Ophelia a pony to take her post down.
I didn’t read Tim Harris’ comment as suggesting he is Elon Musk, only an alter ego. I read it as the possibility that he is an alter ego perhaps for Coel. I don’t want to imply that I know what Tim Harris was thinking, so I am wiling to be shown to be wrong.
@iknklast 18
Tim Harris mentioned Adrian Dittman, who is commonly thought to be Elon Musk. I am not Coel either. I am no one but myself. Why would I post as two people? Why would anyone?
Tim didn’t say anything resembling “Ohtobide is Elon Musk.” He asked Ohtobide if she-or-he is an alter ego. Adding “like Adrian Dittman” does not equal “you are Elon Musk.”
Drat, cross post. Yes Tim mentioned Adrian Dittman but that does not equal “you are Elon Musk.” It’s more like saying “You’re acting like an Elon Musk or Adrian Dittman.”
Anyway, to the substantive dispute – what do you mean “that is a serious accusation”? Serious in the sense of libelous? Don’t be ridiculous. Musk makes a huge point of letting us know that he doesn’t give a shit about all kinds of things people ought to give a shit about. It’s not remotely libelous to say he’s cynically yapping about something he doesn’t genuinely care about.
“Musk doesn’t really give a shit about thousands of girls in working class cities, he gives a shit about sticking it to the brown people.”
That is what you said. If you had made those two accusations about me I would have been very angry and I would have wanted to know why you had said those things. I think you should produce evidence if you say them about Musk. I think you should produce evidence if you say them about anyone. And I said nothing about its being libellous.
I would say it is astonishing behaviour by Musk except that it’s Musk, who is supposedly an official of the new Trump administration. Officials of the USA would normally be slapped down for meddling in an ally’s domestic affairs. Presumably Trump is winking at this – he at the moment is trying to bully the UK into opening up its oil fields for more drilling and has taken issue with our wind turbines. I do hope our govt tells him to naff off as politely as possible.
This of course might be a bit of vengeance for Labour party aficionados going to help the Democrats at the election – stupid of them, as most people don’t like being told who to vote for by foreigners.
My hope is that the UK’s domestic politics will be another toy that he picks up and discards. Musk does epitomise the great carelessness of the wealthy and powerful as described by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
@Ohtobide – the grooming scandal has been rumbling around for many years. I can’t say how much has been hidden and should be brought to light – I’m not au fait with the subject. But let’s take your point that Musk can amplify reasonable concerns – as J K Rowling does with the transgender issue. However J K Rowling is well informed about the subject, and doesn’t retweet stupidity like how King Charles III should dissolve Parliament for another election – the last King Charles who monkeyed with Parliament ended up getting his head chopped off.
Musk shows himself totally ignorant about how UK politics works (Starmer won’t resign with a huge majority with the next election due in 2029). Some Labour councillors resigned because they are p’d off with Starmer’s social policies – Musk, who is too idle to google, or to get a minion to google, assumes they are resigning because of the grooming scandal. So why should anyone in the UK listen to a lazy, ignorant billionaire on anything to do with their politics?
@KBPlayer 23
Yes, it seems that Musk does not understand how British politics works. But people do listen to him. Why, when there are a lot of other people who have been talking about it for years? I don’t know. But they do. And now, thanks mostly to Elon Musk, everyone is talking about it and maybe, though I am not too hopeful, justice will at last be done. So I don’t want him to keep quiet. I want him to keep talking about it.
Ohtobide @ 22: Yes I know you didn’t use the word “libelous.” That’s why there’s a question mark after “in the sense of libelous”: I was asking if that’s what you meant.
As for saying Musk doesn’t give a shit about thousands of girls in working class cities and the rest of it, it’s obviously an opinion. Musk is a very intrusive, showy, energetic, dedicated public figure, who courts controversy and attention. US libel law is somewhat protective of harsh opinions about very famous very rich people or institutions who court attention.
@Nightcrow #12:
Out of interest, which stated policy positions (or other evidence) leads you to conclude that Farage is an “extreme right-winger” or indeed an “extremist” of any sort?
Would you agree that such labels do have meanings? Or is this just the usual internet usage whereby anyone you disagree with is automatically a “far right” bad person who is acting in bad faith?
Thank you, ikhklast #17. You are absolutely correct. People don’t seem to be able to read noewadays.
Ohtobide #18
“Why would I post as two people? Why would anyone?”
I suggest you ask that question to our Elon.
Coel#26
“Out of interest, would you… ?‘; ‘Would you agree that…?” – And up come the pompously posed questions that our fanboy reverts to when put on the spot.
I’d just like to say one thing: John Barron. (Or is that two things?)
About posting as two or more people – we lived through an egregious (and in some ways hilarious) case of posting as two, three, many people back in the distant past. Anybody remember good old Wally Smith and his many many socks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Nigel_Farage
For me though it was mostly the racism.